Journalists Use Internet To Elude Dictators

By Vukoni Lupa-Lasaga, IPS, 18 November 1997

NAIROBI, Nov 18 (IPS) - Nigerian journalist Babafemi Ojudu says he
owes his professional survival to the internet which is keeping
the press in his country one step ahead of government censorship.

In the most recent crackdown on the media, the Nigerian
government seized the phone lines of the weekly paper 'The News',
where Ojudu is managing editor, and forced its editors
underground.

"I hooked my laptop to the phones of friends and got in touch
with our reporters online," he says.

To come here for a conference, the Nigerian editor had to ride
on a motorbike, slip past President Sani Abacha's security detail
and cross the border into Benin from where he winged his way to
Kenya. If he had attempted to board a plane from Lagos, he would
have been arrested and his passport impounded.

Ojudu was among participants from around Africa who attended a
recent two-day African Media Forum in Kenya on media freedom and
the advent of new technology. It was organised by the U.S.-based
Freedom Forum.

The Forum, a 900-million-dollar foundation which this year set
up a branch office in Johannesburg, South Africa, promotes free
press, free speech and free spirit.

'The News' has remained on the newsstands, according to Ojudu,
only because of internet access. He said that a recent coup of the
paper over the censors in Lagos was an expose on the importers of
toxic petrol that is believed to have caused the deaths of several
Nigerian motorists and mechanics.

It was impossible, he said, to get hold of the correct
information within the country, but by browsing on the internet,
reaching out to sources outside the country on e-mail, the
culprits and their international accomplices were exposed.

Thanks to e-mail, Ojudu and other Nigerian journalists are able
to blow the whistle on Abacha's regime whenever one of their
colleagues is incarcerated. This they do through the Lagos-based
Independent Journalists Centre which galvanises international
campaigns for persecuted Nigerian journalists by collecting and
posting news on the internet.

Despite the problems faced by the Nigerian media, Ojudu was
optimistic that the press in his country and other parts of West
Africa would survive African dictatorships.

"In Nigeria we have the most recalcitrant media in Africa,"
he said. "It is not because the state allowed us to, but because
we decided that we should do it," Ojudu said.

Mugambi Karanja, a senior editor at 'The East African
Standard', the longest-surviving English language daily in this
region, was also excited by the technological changes in the
media. But he said that the bottomline in the trade was still good
journalistic reporting, and his paper is not in a rush to have an
internet edition.

"We may do it to have our presence felt elsewhere, but our
basic priority remains having as wide a readership as possible
locally," he said.

Adam Clayton Powell III, who is the Freedom Forum's vice-
president, said information technology was spreading and changing
the face of the media in Africa. In 1996, he said, only a handful
of African countries had Internet Service Providers, but by June
this year, most countries were connected.

He said that the information super highway was not going to
remain an elite medium for long. "In about 20 years every family
or village (in Africa) will have a computer and be connected,"
Powell predicted.

The cause of Powell's optimism was a calculator-size prototype
computer, which he said, could soon cost as little as 10 U.S.
dollars each. "Every 20 years the price of a computer drops by a
factor of a thousand," according to The Freedom Forum vice
president, who is a computer expert.

Technological sceptics have pointed to the absence of
telecommunications infrastructure as the main drawback to rapid
and widespread development of information technology in Africa.

Only about four million phones exist in sub-Saharan Africa
today. This translates into fewer than one line per 100 people.
But according to Powell, alongside the pocket-size computer he
brandished before participants, there is cheaper and efficient
radio communication technology in the pipeline that could secure
fast and affordable connectivity for remote African villages.

The meeting noted that an open, free and democratic media is
still missing in Africa where journalists are still censored,
harassed, imprisoned and even killed in the line of duty. In 1996,
a New York-based watchdog 'Freedom House' reported that at least
six journalists were killed and 100 arrested throughout Africa.

Between 1985 and 1995, out of the 456 journalists killed around
the world, fifty-three journalists were killed in Sub-Saharan
Africa.(END/IPS/VLL/MN/14/PM97)

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